The Informant!'s Scott Bakula on Dream Roles, Fat Damon and That Legendary Playgirl Shoot

Had you ever been given a part without having to audition for it?

Yeah, but usually you at least have a meeting. Every experience is different. When I met Sam Mendes on American Beauty, I told my agent, "I'll do anything in this movie. I just want to be part of this movie. It's such a great script." So I went in with Sam, and I didn't read or anything, we just chatted. You have horror stories of going back and forth, too. I've been told, "You have the part, they just want you to come in so they can hear your voice and meet you." And I lost that one. But this one was a great gift -- it appeared out of nowhere, dropping out of the clouds.

What was your reaction after reading the script for the first time? Did it read as a flat-out comedy?

I have to be honest that I was tipped a little bit, because everybody had read the script but me. "It's the greatest script! It's not what you expect!" But even after I got to the set, I didn't know for the first few days what it was going to be. Obviously, you're working with Steven Soderbergh -- his track record speaks for itself. He's incredibly imaginative and artistic and a visionary, and so I didn't feel I needed to know everything to do what I needed to do. I just put myself in his hands. Matt was trying to figure out what he was going to do as well, and how he was going to play this guy.

To me, one of the great successes of the movie is the tone. It could have been a straight-ahead whistleblower, Erin Brockovich kind of thing. But Steven has done that already, and it wouldn't have been like him to go back and explore that same kind of energy in a film, and happily he hasn't.

It really is kind of Bizarro Erin Brockovich when you think about it.

[Laughs] It is. I think that's a testament to his filmmaking skills, and trying to find new ways to express himself. I looked around that set a few times and I said to myself, "Man. I hope we all end up in the same movie." There's so many different characters here and comedians and this and that, and he figured out how to make it all seem very real. I hope people are excited about because I am. It's different.

There are a bunch of comedians in the movie -- both literal and figurative -- and you're positioned as something of a straight man to them. How did you manage that? Does that role fit you comfortably?

It's a blast to be on a set with comedians, and it's also very hard to be on a set with comedians. Because they've got everybody cracking up all the time. The way it was put to me was that basically my character is the audience's way into the movie. I kind of struggled with that for a while in terms of what that really meant. I think basically it's that I believe this guy, and for a variety of reasons I went on this ride with him.

It seems like you were cast to look physically different from everyone else. It was sort of like, all these pasty, interchangeable white guys, and then there's you, who kind of has the face of the classic, film noir G-Man.

We went a little bit for the look of the real guy. That was his hair style and style of dress. He was very conservative, a bit of a throwback. It was such a small town, it almost had a '40s or '50s feel to it. And then he had all of the outside world crashing his party, really. He's just plodding along, doing his thing like a Columbo almost, keeping his nose to the grindstone. Ultimately that was part of his undoing -- he so, so desperately wanted this to be true, that he maybe didn't see the case as clearly as he would have in other circumstances.

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